Everyone started to have a camera. That's when I started to travel outside of New York and go into nature.

The thing about being a photographer that's so cool is that you get to participate, but you also get to disappear. The camera is in front of your face all the time.

Just having the camera, being able to pull back from situations and be an observer, it saved my life... I realised I could find these intimate moments and that people trusted me. That, basically, my camera was magic.

I'm making the art for me first. I'm making it because these are the pictures I want to see. I'm making pictures that don't yet exist.

I slowly began making a few photos with animals over the years, and I liked how people reacted to them. When I would have the animals on set, I'd notice the way the models would interact with them and there was so much true emotion that you rarely see between two human beings.

There was no luxury. I never got on an airplane until I was 18. We drove everywhere. My dad was like, "Waste not, want not."

I knew my ticket out of the suburbs was art school, so I worked really hard to develop my portfolio and get a scholarship.